Feasibility and acceptability of an intervention for enhancing reintegration in adults with experience of homelessness.

Background: Service centres for homeless adults are potential settings for implementation of reintegration interventions. This study aimed to evaluate 1) the acceptability of a group-based programme among individuals from the broad population of homeless people, and 2) if a future study of its feasibility and acceptability for re-housed homeless people is warranted. Method: Recruiting participants and intervention facilitators from partnering service centres was thought to improve recruitment and retention, cost-effectiveness, and social interactions compared to professional-led interventions. Seven adults with experience of homelessness (3 females, 4 males, mean age 39 years, range 18-63) were recruited to participate in the intervention. The research protocol comprised completion pre/post of scales (Recovering Quality of Life questionnaire; Working Alliance Inventory-short form revised, WAI-SR) and focus groups, and WAI-SR and focus groups after sessions 3 and 6. Results: The intervention and research protocols were feasible, with all participants engaging in all sessions, completing all scales and attending all focus groups. The quantitative data demonstrated the feasibility of obtaining practically useful measures of relevant outcomes. In the 4 focus groups, the intervention received very favourable feedback. Conclusions: This study demonstrated initial feasibility and acceptability of an intervention that places minimal burden on infrastructure and promotes user autonomy. This is an important advance as there is increasing recognition that the challenge of reintegration is as much a psychological and social problem as a housing problem. If effective, this style of intervention may serve as a template for future interventions with similar populations

Ionic Transport Properties in Nanocrystalline Ce0.8A0.2O2-δ (with A = Eu, Gd, Dy, and Ho) Materials

The ionic transport properties of nanocrystalline 20 mol% Eu, Gd, Dy, and Ho doped cerias, with average grain size of around 14 nm were studied by correlating electrical, dielectric properties, and various dynamic parameters. Gd-doped nanocrystalline ceria shows higher value of conductivity (i.e., 1.8 × 10−4 S cm−1 at 550°C) and a lower value of association energy of oxygen vacancies with trivalent dopants Gd3+ (i.e., 0.1 eV), compared to others. Mainly the lattice parameters and dielectric constants (ε∞) are found to control the association energy of oxygen vacancies in these nanomaterials, which in turn resulted in the presence of grain and grain boundary conductivity in Gd- and Eu-doped cerias and only significant grain interior conductivity in Dy- and Ho-doped cerias

Berberine Chloride Mediates Its Anti-Leishmanial Activity via Differential Regulation of the Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase Pathway in Macrophages

BACKGROUND: A complex interplay between Leishmania and macrophages influences parasite survival and necessitates disruption of signaling molecules, eventually resulting in impairment of macrophage function. In this study, we demonstrate the immunomodulatory activity of Berberine chloride in Leishmania infected macrophages. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The IC(50) of Berberine chloride, a quaternary isoquinoline alkaloid was tested in an amastigote macrophage model and its safety index measured by a cell viability assay. It eliminated intracellular amastigotes, the IC(50) being 2.8 fold lower than its IC(50) in promastigotes (7.10 µM vs. 2.54 µM) and showed a safety index >16. Levels of intracellular and extracellular nitric oxide (NO) as measured by flow cytometry and Griess assay respectively showed that Berberine chloride in Leishmania infected macrophages increased production of NO. Measurement of the mRNA expression of iNOS, IL-12 and IL-10 by RT-PCR along with levels of IL-12p40 and IL-10 by ELISA showed that in infected macrophages, Berberine chloride enhanced expression of iNOS and IL-12p40, concomitant with a downregulation of IL-10. The phosphorylation status of extracellular signal related kinase (ERK1/2) and p38 mitogen activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK) was studied by western blotting. In infected macrophages, Berberine chloride caused a time dependent activation of p38 MAPK along with deactivation of ERK1/2; addition of a p38 MAPK inhibitor SB203580 inhibited the increased generation of NO and IL-12p40 by Berberine chloride as also prevented its decrease of IL-10. CONCLUSIONS: Berberine chloride modulated macrophage effector responses via the mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway, highlighting the importance of MAPKs as an antiparasite target

DNA Barcoding of Recently Diverged Species: Relative Performance of Matching Methods

Recently diverged species are challenging for identification, yet they are frequently of special interest scientifically as well as from a regulatory perspective. DNA barcoding has proven instrumental in species identification, especially in insects and vertebrates, but for the identification of recently diverged species it has been reported to be problematic in some cases. Problems are mostly due to incomplete lineage sorting or simply lack of a ‘barcode gap’ and probably related to large effective population size and/or low mutation rate. Our objective was to compare six methods in their ability to correctly identify recently diverged species with DNA barcodes: neighbor joining and parsimony (both tree-based), nearest neighbor and BLAST (similarity-based), and the diagnostic methods DNA-BAR, and BLOG. We analyzed simulated data assuming three different effective population sizes as well as three selected empirical data sets from published studies. Results show, as expected, that success rates are significantly lower for recently diverged species (∼75%) than for older species (∼97%) (P<0.00001). Similarity-based and diagnostic methods significantly outperform tree-based methods, when applied to simulated DNA barcode data (P<0.00001). The diagnostic method BLOG had highest correct query identification rate based on simulated (86.2%) as well as empirical data (93.1%), indicating that it is a consistently better method overall. Another advantage of BLOG is that it offers species-level information that can be used outside the realm of DNA barcoding, for instance in species description or molecular detection assays. Even though we can confirm that identification success based on DNA barcoding is generally high in our data, recently diverged species remain difficult to identify. Nevertheless, our results contribute to improved solutions for their accurate identification

A chemical survey of exoplanets with ARIEL

Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a huge range of masses, sizes and orbits: from rocky Earth-like planets to large gas giants grazing the surface of their host star. However, the essential nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious: there is no known, discernible pattern linking the presence, size, or orbital parameters of a planet to the nature of its parent star. We have little idea whether the chemistry of a planet is linked to its formation environment, or whether the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet’s birth, and evolution. ARIEL was conceived to observe a large number (~1000) of transiting planets for statistical understanding, including gas giants, Neptunes, super-Earths and Earth-size planets around a range of host star types using transit spectroscopy in the 1.25–7.8 μm spectral range and multiple narrow-band photometry in the optical. ARIEL will focus on warm and hot planets to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres which should show minimal condensation and sequestration of high-Z materials compared to their colder Solar System siblings. Said warm and hot atmospheres are expected to be more representative of the planetary bulk composition. Observations of these warm/hot exoplanets, and in particular of their elemental composition (especially C, O, N, S, Si), will allow the understanding of the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation during the nebular phase and the following few million years. ARIEL will thus provide a representative picture of the chemical nature of the exoplanets and relate this directly to the type and chemical environment of the host star. ARIEL is designed as a dedicated survey mission for combined-light spectroscopy, capable of observing a large and well-defined planet sample within its 4-year mission lifetime. Transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy methods, whereby the signal from the star and planet are differentiated using knowledge of the planetary ephemerides, allow us to measure atmospheric signals from the planet at levels of 10–100 part per million (ppm) relative to the star and, given the bright nature of targets, also allows more sophisticated techniques, such as eclipse mapping, to give a deeper insight into the nature of the atmosphere. These types of observations require a stable payload and satellite platform with broad, instantaneous wavelength coverage to detect many molecular species, probe the thermal structure, identify clouds and monitor the stellar activity. The wavelength range proposed covers all the expected major atmospheric gases from e.g. H2O, CO2, CH4 NH3, HCN, H2S through to the more exotic metallic compounds, such as TiO, VO, and condensed species. Simulations of ARIEL performance in conducting exoplanet surveys have been performed – using conservative estimates of mission performance and a full model of all significant noise sources in the measurement – using a list of potential ARIEL targets that incorporates the latest available exoplanet statistics. The conclusion at the end of the Phase A study, is that ARIEL – in line with the stated mission objectives – will be able to observe about 1000 exoplanets depending on the details of the adopted survey strategy, thus confirming the feasibility of the main science objectives.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Search for Charged Higgs Bosons in e+e- Collisions at \sqrt{s} = 189 GeV

A search for pair-produced charged Higgs bosons is performed with the L3 detector at LEP using data collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 188.6 GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 176.4 pb^-1. Higgs decays into a charm and a strange quark or into a tau lepton and its associated neutrino are considered. The observed events are consistent with the expectations from Standard Model background processes. A lower limit of 65.5 GeV on the charged Higgs mass is derived at 95 % confidence level, independent of the decay branching ratio Br(H^{+/-} -> tau nu)

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO